Re: Time for some new blood around here?????
There are a hundred RV forums out there. Many are manufacturer-specific but few of them are manufacturer-owned as this one has been since March 2008 when I transferred license of it to Heartland upon my employment with them. Even before that, since October 2004 when I launched the site, we had rules the we moderated to.
While it would be nice if Heartland built perfect products and all we had to chat about here was sunshine and roses, the reality is that the product is imperfect. As are the roads, campground power systems, product owners etc. Stuff happens. It's how we communicate our RV issues on this forum that makes this community strong.
Ideally, with regard to posting on this forum about "issues" with one's RV, what I'm looking for here is for the owner to come here to look for help/solutions. There are just so many other places online owners can use as their personal soap box. Thousands of owners have come here looking for and have received great advice on how to do this or how to fix that. That's the goal. And sure, some of those new forum users came on a bit strong in the beginning and it was hard for any reader to know whether this was just a "hit and run" rant/anti-Heartland campaign of if they were looking for ideas/help/solutions. And most of them were in fact looking for help. And we (the collective we users here) smothered them with kindness, help/solutions. And they applied what they learned and got the issue resolved.
But honestly - some people do sign up on this forum each week to use it as their personal soap box to complain about their RV, their dealer etc. That is not what this forum is here for. Sure, there are ways we can share our RV and dealer experiences here in a way that's not a complete attack, but at the end of the day, this is Heartland's forum. And we are all here as users of their space. As users, we've agreed to conduct ourselves in a certain manner. When we don't toe-that-line, the moderators, under my direction do their best to keep things civil. We truly do try to work with users who's posts we feel need to be edited or deleted. Some take it in the spirit we meant and others take it as an affront. What some users forget are two things. They agreed to a certain set of rules when signing up and this is not a space owned by them to use as they see fit.
With all this said, I know that it's impossible to have an online community that is a perfect fit for everyone. This is precisely why there are so many options out there. We have our rules, other forums have theirs.
I know this doesn't resolve any of the points brought up in the various posts before this one, but I felt it important to add a bit more context around why this forum exists and by extension, what it is not.
There are a hundred RV forums out there. Many are manufacturer-specific but few of them are manufacturer-owned as this one has been since March 2008 when I transferred license of it to Heartland upon my employment with them. Even before that, since October 2004 when I launched the site, we had rules the we moderated to.
While it would be nice if Heartland built perfect products and all we had to chat about here was sunshine and roses, the reality is that the product is imperfect. As are the roads, campground power systems, product owners etc. Stuff happens. It's how we communicate our RV issues on this forum that makes this community strong.
Ideally, with regard to posting on this forum about "issues" with one's RV, what I'm looking for here is for the owner to come here to look for help/solutions. There are just so many other places online owners can use as their personal soap box. Thousands of owners have come here looking for and have received great advice on how to do this or how to fix that. That's the goal. And sure, some of those new forum users came on a bit strong in the beginning and it was hard for any reader to know whether this was just a "hit and run" rant/anti-Heartland campaign of if they were looking for ideas/help/solutions. And most of them were in fact looking for help. And we (the collective we users here) smothered them with kindness, help/solutions. And they applied what they learned and got the issue resolved.
But honestly - some people do sign up on this forum each week to use it as their personal soap box to complain about their RV, their dealer etc. That is not what this forum is here for. Sure, there are ways we can share our RV and dealer experiences here in a way that's not a complete attack, but at the end of the day, this is Heartland's forum. And we are all here as users of their space. As users, we've agreed to conduct ourselves in a certain manner. When we don't toe-that-line, the moderators, under my direction do their best to keep things civil. We truly do try to work with users who's posts we feel need to be edited or deleted. Some take it in the spirit we meant and others take it as an affront. What some users forget are two things. They agreed to a certain set of rules when signing up and this is not a space owned by them to use as they see fit.
With all this said, I know that it's impossible to have an online community that is a perfect fit for everyone. This is precisely why there are so many options out there. We have our rules, other forums have theirs.
I know this doesn't resolve any of the points brought up in the various posts before this one, but I felt it important to add a bit more context around why this forum exists and by extension, what it is not.
